Homeschooling a spectrum kid

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After reading several posts here about the subject, I thought I'd start a new topic on it.

DS is 10 and we pulled him out of 4th grade. We live in Illinois which makes it easy to h/s.

We currently use Math-U-See (but wish I had tried Singapore Maths first), Daily Grammar (dailygrammar.com) for five minutes a day or so and Wordsmith Apprentice from writeshop.com and assorted science/history/social studies sources. He likes the classicsforkids.com for short music lessons that introduce composers and styles of music. I've been trying to find art projects that go along with whatever he's interested in for his other subjects.

We record a lot of the "Classroom" programs from A&E and History Channel and we've watched Liberty! from PBS which we rented from our Netflix account.

I'm constantly amazed at the number of free, internet resources for learning - there's always some new link to explore.

Oh, and the socialization thing that most wonder about - he's got neighborhood friends (h/s has done wonders for his self-esteem and well-being so he now actually has a few friends), swim team, Cub Scouts and we belong to a h/s group.

We have our good days and our bad days and he does sometimes miss public school but he misses it from back in 1st grade before the other kids started noticing his differences. The hardest thing is the school parties - he wants to exchange Valentine cards, he wants to do the Halloween parties and so forth that he remembers from ps days. Otherwise, his tics are gone, he's kinder, you can see the difference in his eyes - he's learning and gets to have a say in what he learns like when he wanted to study the Romans - okay, we did it. Now we're doing something with the Iroquois - he can jump around and enjoy what he's learning instead of sitting in a noisy, busy classroom and forced to start/stop at certain times. If he needs two hours for math, okay, but we've also done math in 10 minutes.

How are you dealing with h/s? Tips? Ideas? Questions??

I would suggest you go ahead and start singapore math-- the books (make sure to use Primary Math, US edition) are only about $7 each and you can get away with just buying the workbooks (though it's good to have the textbooks on hand as they have lots of pictorial examples). You can always resell math-u-see or donate it to another homeschooler.

We struggle with the social stuff because my son never wants to leave the house and neither do I . He doesn't have much inclination to seek out friends either.

One thing you could try is finding a church that is large enough to have a lot of kids and trying out the sunday school and activities there. It is hard, though, to forge out a social life when you are homeschooling and not naturally social.

When I was homeschooled, my mom hired a private tutor for me (so she wouldn't have to deal with me and because she works long hours) and we did school through The American School, which is actually located in Illinois. Basically, I would have workbooks that they sent, my tutor would help me with them, and we would send them in and receive my grade. It really was as simple as that. However, personally I couldn't stand it. I couldn't see my friends and I was bored to death doing the exact same stuff day after day. Unlike most Aspies, I CAN'T STAND routine!

I'm an Aspie who adopted a child with PDD-NOS. I'm no lover of public school--hated it myself and got bullied and stopped trying in high school. But I tend to like being alone and without school, I may be even more clueless about people than I am now (and I'm still very clueless; I grew up when there were no interventions or even a dx. of AS). I've seen leaps and bounds improvements in my son's self-esteem and he's learning a lot too. My personal opinion is that homeschooling isn't good for those on the Spectrum. I homeschooled one year, and my son just loved staying in. Aspies tend to shy away from peer aged kids and hang with younger or older kids w ho will accept their quirks. But then there is the workplace, and nobody makes allowances. I did sort of learn to handle myself in bullying situations, and I made the two friends I consider REAL friends in school. JMHO